Can Hiring Millennials Make Your Workplace Happier?

To others, they’re rugged, tech-savvy individualists, full of optimism and eager to collaborate when needed.

Either way, there’s no denying that Millennials are destined to have a powerful impact on the workplace. Indeed, researchers estimate that by 2025, Generation Y (born 1978-1994) will comprise nearly 75 percent of the world’s workforce.

Are You Committing “Sins” With Your Social Collaboration Platform?

Erika Blaney

08/20/2014

Social collaboration platforms are designed to help organizations engage the right people, accelerate innovation and improve business performance.

​Unfortunately though, I’ve heard from many managers who feel underwhelmed by the results their social collaboration platforms produce. They’ve had only limited success and are often left scratching their heads, wondering what they could be doing differently.

What Back-to-School Can Teach Us About Customer Loyalty

Rajat Paharia

08/18/2014

Schools across the country are opening their doors to students eager to start a new year of classes.

And you can bet that most of these young folks are outfitted with the latest fashions, supplies and devices. Indeed, data from the National Retail Federation (NRF) shows that back-to-school spending for K–12 and college for clothing, shoes, supplies and electronics is expected to reach $74.9 billion this year!

Of course, that comes as no surprise to anyone who has been inside a mall over the past month, where it’s difficult not to succumb to a mind-numbing haze of saturation in this competitive market. Every store and kiosk is stuffed with the latest “back-to-school this” and the next “must-have that,” all clamoring for attention. Consumers are, in a word, distracted—by all the choices . . . and by online merchandising and social media platforms that produce an endless stream of deals and information about what’s “hot.”

As Pam Goodfellow, Prosper Insights Consumer Insights Director, sums it up, “Students will make sure to keep one eye on social media and the other on retailers’ websites as they seek out what’s new and exciting in their hunt for fresh, fashionable and relevant back-to-school gear.”

It’s how shoppers operate now –whether they’re in the market for back-to-school items, groceries, manufacturing machinery, software or anything else. Typically, there are numerous product options, coupled with a wide array of channels and platforms –each one overflowing with information, offers, reviews and advice.

How To Use Gamification To Improve Call Center Performance

Caitlin Donaldson

08/07/2014

Recent research by Deloitte found that 62% of organizations view customer experience provided through contact centers as a competitive differentiator. What’s more, 40% of the organizations that participated in the study have dedicated customer experience resources, and 82% recognized “accuracy and quality of information” as the most important customer experience attribute.

Do your call centers give you a competitive edge? Do your agents deliver quality service . . . and do they provide it efficiently and effectively?

Do You Have Questions About How To Get Started With Gamification?

Keith Conley

07/21/2014

As Bunchball’s Founder and Chief Product Officer Rajat Paharia wrote about last month, the gamification landscape is shifting. More and more people know “the basics.” They understand gamification involves motivating people through data. They appreciate that it adds real business value and has proven to be an effective way to engage customers, employees and partners.

In other words, I’m now part of fewer and fewer conversations that begin with the question, “What is gamification?” Instead, people are looking for answers to questions like, “What can gamification do for us?” and “How can we get a gamification solution up and running where we work?”

Getting to Know Your Customers Better

Erika Blaney

07/15/2014

Get to Know Your Customers Day falls on the third Thursday at the beginning of each quarter –that means it’s happening this week on July 17. For me, Get to Know Your Customers Day serves as a valuable, periodic reminder that satisfied, loyal customers are essential to profitability.

But ask any marketer and they’ll tell you: Keeping customers satisfied and loyal is becoming more and more of a challenge. Consumers are barraged with options, offers and media noise like never before, and it’s increasingly difficult to ensure your brand message can cut through all that noise.

Guest Post: Can You Use Gamification to Engage and Retain Hourly Workers? Learn From Applebee’s

Robin Jenkins

07/08/2014

Hourly employees are notoriously difficult to engage and maintain –and perhaps no one knows that better than those of us in the restaurant/food service industry. I work for RMH Franchise Corporation, which operates more than 130 Applebee’s restaurants, and so I’m well aware that turnover rates for hourly employees in the restaurant industry can only be described as “crazy” or “insanely” high. Consider this: Turnover for hourly-employed bank tellers is labeled “high” when it reaches 30%, but the average turnover for hourly-employed restaurant workers logs in at 125%!

Fortunately, at RMH, we’ve discovered how to start turning statistics like those around –and the key to our approach is this: gamification.

Nine Steps To Introduce Gamification To Your Enterprise

Erika Blaney

06/24/2014

With a predisposition to explore and a propensity for curiosity, humans are natural innovators. Without this instinctive urge, prehistoric humans wouldn’t have created spears to help them hunt, and they wouldn’t have learned to build campfires to avoid freezing to death. Innovation is paramount for survival, and yet . . .

In the business world, we’ve all experienced barriers to bringing new ideas to fruition. Sometimes there’s pushback (or even ridicule) from our “tribe.” Sometimes there’s a palpable fear of change. Often, the problem is simply not knowing where to start.

As an innovator in your company, you’re undoubtedly aware of how gamification—a proven strategy for engaging customers, employees and partners—is shaking up the business world. But you may be wondering exactly how to bring this data-driven motivational tool into your workplace.

A Different Kind of Rockstar Roadshow

Rajat Paharia

06/18/2014

The Bunchball Rockstar Roadshow on May 15 was a huge success – and I’m not just saying that because I’m the founder and Chief Product Officer of Bunchball. I’m saying that because the presenters were stellar, the attendees were engaged, the discussions were rich, the questions stimulating and our specialty Nitrotini was, well . . . it was exactly as good as it looks:

Gamification Over? No Way – We’re Just Getting Started

When I see headlines like those, I can’t help it: I’m instantly skeptical. I know editors and writers craft them for effect – to grab the reader’s attention –and not because whatever they’re claiming is necessarily 100% true. (Did anyone really think Kiefer Sutherland’s character wouldn’t “live another day?”)

So, when I first ran across Fortune’s article titled, “Looks like that whole ‘gamification’ thing is over,” I’ll be honest, my gut reaction was something like, “Oh, boy. Here we go, again. Another trumped-up headline. I bet the article has nothing to do with gamification being ‘over.’”

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As the market leader and innovator in gamification, Bunchball’s gamification solutions have motivated more than 125 million users to complete more than 20 billion actions on behalf of over 300 customers.